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Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

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  • 31 Aug 2006
    e-government

    We're MPs! We've got mobiles! We use YouTube!

    Well done to the Home Affairs Select Committee for its Citizen Calling initiative.

    The topic is young people and the criminal justice system. The Home Affairs Select Committee wants your help to define how Parliament should look at the issue. They will set some questions – the idea is that you use your phone to send your views in as either txt, video, audio or images.

    But… ouch. Some clumsy examples of kidspeak (what ‘decent gear’ are you offering?)… and a big ugly registration form, before you’re allowed to participate. Although the Hansard Society’s website helpfully tells you the number to contact, without having to surrender your personals. It’s 07786201247.

    Committee chairman John Denham does his best to sell it to The Kids via YouTube, in a video supposedly ‘recorded on a mobile phone’. (Ooh, how cutting edge.)

    I really want to be enthusiastic about this… but it feels like a classic case of ‘medium not message’. The existence of YouTube, and the ability to send video from place to place, is not in itself going to change the ways politics happens. You’ll only win people’s trust when they can see their input – in whatever format they can deliver it – having a direct effect.

  • 31 Aug 2006
    e-government

    Government blog spotted in Northern Ireland

    I’ve been totally remiss by not mentioning the Northern Ireland eGovernmentUnit’s blog, which has been banging stuff out for almost a year. It says it’s ‘designed to be a general eGovernment news resource and source of information on current developments in technology and not a definitive source of information on NI eGovernment activities.’ Which is a pity, since I’d probably be inclined to subscribe to it if it was a definitive source of information on NI eGovernment. I don’t think we need yet another blog talking about Google’s web apps suite. (It’s yet another Typepad-hosted effort, incidentally.)

  • 30 Aug 2006
    e-government

    Blair's army of Whitehall press officers?

    Inevitably there’s more to the Conservatives’ claim that ‘spending on Government spin has trebled under Labour and taxpayers are now supporting an army of more than 3,200 press officers‘, the lead story in this morning’s Daily Telegraph, than initially meets the eye.

    For one thing, Graeme Wilson seems to use the term ‘press officers’ very loosely: he goes on to confirm that it actually covers ‘press officers and other public relations staff’, which would typically include the press office, publications managers, online activities, maybe even call centre people. He mentions in passing that ‘when Labour came to power in 1997, just over 300 fully-fledged press officers were working in Whitehall‘ – note, we’re now talking about ‘fully fledged’ press officers, undermining the original comparison – ‘although that figure excluded a small number of other public relations staff.‘ Well, I was in Whitehall at the time, and I can tell you that it was far from a ‘small number’ of other people employed in PR activity.

    Besides, as a Cabinet Office press officer points out in the Guardian’s write-up, we’re looking at a very different media landscape now, compared with ten years ago. Not least thanks to the development of direct-to-consumer channels, like the internet. I’m not saying the increase hasn’t been substantial; and I’m certainly not saying that there isn’t fat to be trimmed. But please guys, let’s make valid comparisons for the sake of sensible debate.

  • 29 Aug 2006
    e-government

    Surely we aren't that stupid

    • Silicon.com: ‘The UK Cabinet Office has been forced to pull one of the public service videos it published on YouTube due to copyright violation.’
    • Youtube: ‘This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner COI Television because its content was used without permission.’
    • COI: ‘COI’s Chief Executive reports to the Minister for the Cabinet Office.’
  • 29 Aug 2006
    e-government

    Tories, Labour and LDs unite

    There’s something really important happening on political blogs. ‘Britain’s foremost political bloggers have come together to form MessageSpace, an exclusive advertising channel that offers exposure to opinion formers and thought leaders.’ Yeah, and?

    Well, look at who makes up the MessageSpace family. ‘Our publishing partners include ConservativeHome, Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale, Labourhome, Political Betting, Recess Monkey and LibDemBlogs.’ Yes, that’s right – the three main parties’ online grassroots networks are all playing together in this initiative.

    It’s almost saying ‘that which unites us is greater than that which divides us’. Could you see the political parties cooperating like this in the real world? Mind you, I might be over-analysing this… maybe it’s just a pragmatic decision in the interests of generating some cash.

  • 29 Aug 2006
    Uncategorised

    Writing for the web: it's all about search

    Interesting to see Jakob Nielsen’s latest thoughts on the subject of writing for the web:

    ‘Web users are growing ever-more search dominant. Search is how people discover new websites and find individual pages within websites and intranets. Unless you’re listed on the first search engine results page (SERP), you might as well not exist. So, the first duty of writing for the Web is to write to be found.‘

    I’ve written and delivered a few ‘writing for the web’ courses in my time; my more recent attempts have featured a chunk about search engines and SEO. I wonder how many ‘writing’ trainers include that? It’s a fine example of technical and creative skills meeting head-on.

    Naturally, the inverted pyramid thing still applies… but I’ve always considered that to be basic ‘good writing’ policy anyway, regardless of the medium. It’s the concept of the search engine which marks ‘writing for the web’ out as being a new and different discipline.

    Just as an aside… I notice that Nielsen’s approach to the URLs of his columns changed about a year ago, from a yyyymmdd.html approach to a ‘pretty URL’ based on keywords (chosen manually, I suspect). It’s a reminder that the Address Bar is another area for potential keyword loading. Use it wisely. (The WordPress blogging tool is especially good at this.)

  • 25 Aug 2006
    Uncategorised

    Britain's favourite blogs

    Hitwise’s Heather Hopkins always has interesting insight… this time, she reveals Britain’s Top 10 blogs. So what is everybody reading? Silly videos, a sex diary, celebrity gossip, soccer (with Arsenal topping Liverpool, ha!)… and politics. Mainly right-of-centre politics too. I’m intrigued to note that 7 of the 10 are UK-based.

    It’s also worth pointing out that the ‘serious’ blogging platforms – Typepad, WordPress.com – don’t make the top ten blog platforms. The market seems to be dominated by Windows Live (ie MSN) Spaces and Myspace, with Livejournal leading the chasing group. If I can generalise outrageously for a moment… those are what you’d probably call kids’ sites. The younger generation is growing up with blogs as part of their normal media diet.

    (It’s probably worth echoing Heather’s caveat: ‘we are reporting website visits, and not blog readers such as RSS and ATOM feeds.’)

  • 25 Aug 2006
    Uncategorised

    Another IE7 version, another nervous moment

    There’s a new version of Internet Explorer version 7 out… and significantly, it’s now being called a ‘release candidate’ rather than a ‘beta version’. Writing on the IE team blog, product manager Dean Hachamovitch says: ‘You may not notice many visible changes from the Beta 3 release; all we did was listen to your feedback, fix bugs that you reported, and make final adjustments to our CSS support.’

    Working with the frequent releases of IE7 beta versions has been a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s good to have a sight of where the product is going. But on the other, it’s always a nervous moment when you open your page designs in the latest beta/RC version.

    There’s no hiding from the fact that IE7 will be the planet’s dominant browser, within a few weeks of its final release, scheduled for the end of the year. Users won’t get a choice, as it will be forced upon them. So the only sensible thing to do is to be as prepared as possible… and that means testing against whatever the latest IE7 version is.

    Dean’s statement that the adjustments to CSS support are ‘final’ at least implies that things won’t change dramatically between now and release. (There’s also a quote from a Microsoft spokesperson saying ‘That would be our hope, that this is the last (release candidate) before we release.‘) Hopefully that means we can stop worrying about a potential CSS crisis on our lovingly crafted page designs. But it will still be a nervous moment, the day I download the final version for the first time…

  • 24 Aug 2006
    Uncategorised

    New BBC blog hints at killing off email service

    The latest member of the BBC blogging club is Radio 4’s PM programme. The editor, Peter Ribbon tells the BBC Editors blog:

    ‘We’ve decided to do a blog because I strongly believe the intimate relationship PM listeners have with the programme is similar to the sense of belonging successful online communities have.’

    He’s not kidding; the numbers of comments on the early posts are approaching three figures. But he continues:

    The massive take up of the PM Newsletter has reinforced that view for me. The newsletter will continue, for now, but the blog allows listeners to talk to each other without us getting in the way and not just when we are on air.

    The interesting words there are ‘for now’. There’s little doubt in my mind that blogs (and by extension, RSS feeds) are replacing email as the one-to-many communication channel of choice. I find it much more convenient to read feeds than email newsletters or alerts; and from a producer’s perspective, the overheads involved in creating and maintaining a blog/feed are much lower. Certainly all my professional focus is on RSS; when we do our big migration to a new platform, we’ll only be continuing with existing email alert functions.

  • 23 Aug 2006
    e-government

    The Home Office, the radio advert and the porn links

    The Home Office has received a telling-off from the Advertising Standards Authority, for failing to spell out the URL of a campaign website in a radio commercial. The ASA has ruled that ‘the ad should not be broadcast again in its current form’ – but it’s a bit much to say, as the BBC does, that the ad has been banned.

    The domain thinkuknow.co.uk was registered by the Home Office as far back as 8 November 2001. It was relaunched in January this year, as promoted on the Home Office website itself. The follow-up publicity campaign, which ran on 96 Trent FM in March this year, told listeners:

    What you say online isn’t always what a paedophile hears. Giving out personal info could let a paedophile track you down. Be smart online, be safe offline. Visit thinkuknow.co.uk

    All well and good. But they didn’t say that it was the letter ‘u’ in the middle, rather than the word ‘y-o-u’. And even though txt msging has ruined the young generation’s grasp of English, I’d still say people would be more likely to type in ‘you’.

    The domain thinkyouknow.co.uk was registered as recently as 15 February 2006 – note, a couple of weeks after the relaunch – by one Chris Fox trading as Liquid Names, with an address in Spalding, Lincolnshire (although it looks like he tried to sell the house in question on eBay in April). The domain is currently ‘parked’, and if you go there, you’ll see a page of ‘sponsored links’ – in other words, adverts generating revenue for the owner.

    The ASA received only one complaint, from a woman who said the thinkyouknow.co.uk site ‘contained links to websites of an adult nature including pornography websites’. In their defence, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (who have since taken ownership of the website) say that:

    the inappropriate material on the other website was at least four clicks away from the homepage, and CEOP believed that any user would be aware, by that point, that it was not a site about child protection on the internet.

    which seems a fair point. In fact, on virtually any page on the internet, you’re probably just four clicks away from ‘inappropriate material’. (Tip: don’t test this theory during office hours.)

    My take on this? It’s right that the Home Office should get a slap on the wrist for this… not for pointing to pornography (which is really pushing it a bit), but because they should never have used a URL which could so easily be misheard, without spending the couple of quid necessary to purchase the erroneous alternate. Bear in mind, they had four and a half years to do so.

    (Update: I’m wondering if they maybe used to own the domain, but let it lapse? There are over 100 references to thinkyouknow in Google, from what you would consider authoritative and reliable sources, including the BBC, Hansard, Oftel/Ofcom, various police forces, BT, and – inevitably – at least one Home Office website.)

    Of course, all this free publicity for the thinkuknow site can’t be bad. Er, just a minute… they didn’t engineer this, did they? After all, the whole premise of the complaint is that the misguided listener ended up on a page which she took to be something it actually wasn’t. Which seems to be the whole point of the campaign… 😉

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